Various businesses handle a large volume of phone calls from clients or customers. To facilitate the processing of this large volume of phone calls, many businesses utilize technologies such as call centers and automated call routing equipment. In general, each call center contains the equipment and personnel necessary to manage and to process a large volume of inbound or outbound calls. Inbound call centers provide support for incoming sales and for customer service requests. For example, inbound call centers receive calls from customers looking to obtain information about the goods or services that a company sells, to purchase those goods or services, to manage their accounts and to obtain assistance. The same arrangement of equipment in a given call center, however, can be used as either an inbound call center or an outbound call center.
The problems associated with call routing inbound calls increase as the customer service functions are divided and distributed among an increasing number of departments and representatives. Therefore, customers experience increasing difficultly in identifying the correct customer service group—by having to locate a telephone number associated with that group, for example. The difficulty in identifying the proper service group includes identifying the department providing a particular service, e.g. the Radiology Department at the local hospital, or identifying the person that is on duty or that is currently performing a particular function, e.g. the consultant on duty, the officer of the day, the acting manager or the pediatrician on call.
Inbound call centers typically contain an automatic call distributor (ACD) to handle incoming calls and to provide the desired routing. For example, the ACD connects calls to a sales representative, a customer service representative or a help desk operator, among others. The ACD also facilitates automated routing of incoming calls to prompt the caller to select one or more menu choices and to place calls that cannot be answered immediately into a hold queue until the next appropriate agent becomes available. The hold queue provides the caller with music, advertising or periodic barge-in messages updating the caller on the current queue status. Reponses to the menu choices facilitate routing of the call through the call center in the most appropriate way.
The routing and queuing provided by the ACD was historically handled by a live human operator. For example, a customer would call a customer service number and would be connected with the live operator. The caller would describe the nature of the issue or service desired, for example by saying, “I have a question about my bill,” or “The item I ordered hasn't arrived yet.” The live operator would determine the customer's needs, route the call accordingly and provide verbal assurance to the customer that the call is being handled by providing responses such as, “You need to speak with our sales department. One moment, please, while I connect you.”
The use of ACD has provided companies with a more efficient method of handling and distributing incoming customer requests, particularly as the number of these requests grows. In general, ACD systems prompt callers through a multitude of levels of menus. Customer input is provided by selecting numbers, letters and symbols on the customer premises equipment (CPE) in response to recorded prompts from the ACD. Examples of these prompts include “Press 1 for new orders, press 2 to check on the status of an existing order, press 3 for additional options, press the pound sign to repeat these options.” These automated systems often require callers to pass through several levels of menu selections, listening to all options and figuring out which one best applies. As the number of options increases, it is increasingly difficult for a customer to keep track of the various options. If a customer progresses through many levels and is inadvertently disconnected, that customer must reconnect and step through all of the menus again. In addition, callers are often not presented with any options for speaking directly with a live operator.
Recent technological advances provide for the use of voice recognition systems to facilitate customer routing and menu selection. These systems, however, do not eliminate the need to progress through various menus levels. In addition, voice recognition systems provide additional problems including an inability to understand all spoken responses. With these limitations, ACD's can create a customer service interface that is slow and frustrating and that produces a negative response in customers, which is not a desired reaction for purposes of customer service.
Therefore, a need exists for systems and methods that provide for automated and efficient routing of incoming customer service requests to call centers in a more customer-friendly environment.